will apple's domination of the personal audio player business be challenged? half a dozen competitors will soon be selling hard drivebased portable jukeboxes. all will be cheaper than the ipod. the question is, will any of them have the right combination of usability, style, and compact size to lure you away from the ipod?

contenders who could undercut the ipod's price by 50 percent haven't announced products yet, but they will before the holiday season. sony, the competitor most likely to match apple in style and ergonomics, now says it won't enter the market until next year. so we'll see almost-ipod products: almost as small, almost as elegant, and almost as easy to use. what you will have by year's end is affordability: a 20gb hard drive jukebox for $200 and a 40gb one for $250. a $150 10gb player is possible early next year.

compare that with 10gb, 15gb, and 30gb ipods for $300, $400, and $500, respectively. current ipod competitors include archos, creative labs, e.digital, philips, and rca, and their products cost $250 and up. expect to see one or more pc makers that have dabbled in personal audio come aboard, too.

apple has had a free ride, because competitors knew what to do but didn't do it. making a great music player is no secret. apple's initial insistence on using a 1.8-inch-wide hard drive from a single supplier helped keep the case small. vendors attempting to emulate the ipod say the two best choices in 1.8-inch hard drives are from toshiba (apple's original supplier) and hitachi, but these have slightly different footprints: toshiba's are a bit taller, and hitachi's are a bit wider. so to gain leverage in negotiating hard drive prices, some ipod competitors will size their cases to fit both. the difference is only a few tenths of an inch in each direction, but this could add up to a 20 percent increase in volume. some manufacturers use 2.5-inch hard drives, making the players up to twice as big as the ipod.

as hard drive mp3 player prices move down toward $200, the desirability of flash memory players may decrease, too. if you could get 350 hours of music for $200, would you pay $125 for 2 hours (128mb) of music? i think that market needs to top out at $100 for the player plus 128mb of integrated or flash memory. either that or the players need dynamite feature sets.

wma compatibility is useful in small-capacity players. 64-kbps wma is fine for casual listening, and who wouldn't like the ability to fit 2 hours of music on a 64mb card, versus 1 hour of mp3s ripped at 128 kbps? you'll also want to be able to swap in an alkaline battery when the rechargeable battery gives out. on hard drive players with fixed rechargeable batteries, you'll appreciate an increase in battery life from the current 10 hours to closer to 20 hours, which will let you leave the transformer at home on weekend trips. some users find the battery life of the new ipods has decreased from 12 hours to about 8.

usb 2.0 is essential for hard drive players; for flash-based players, write speeds don't push the 12-mbps limit of usb 1.1. other features you may want are voice recording, an am/fm tuner, and trickle charging via usb. the ability to off-load photos via flash cards may come in future players; for now, this feature exists only in $500 audio/video players (either built-in or via an add-on module) with small color lcds.

with flash players, since you can't have all your music on a memory card, you'll want a convenient way to transfer music quickly. i'm partial to the kind of device that plugs directly into the usb jack of your pc or notebook and lets you drag and drop music directly into the player using windows explorer.

if you're in a hurry to get your music loaded, you'll find that some digital rights management schemes get in the way. i appreciate the plight of starving musicians whose music is ripped off left and right. but when i go running and want fresh music in my player that matches today's mood, i can sublimate my social conscience for the duration of the run.

watch for in-between playersbigger than flash players, potentially smaller than the ipodfrom rca (thomson), rio, and others, using a tiny, low-cost 1.5gb hard drive ($60 wholesale) from start-up cornice. it will let you carry around 25 hours of music (or 50 hours at 64 kbps). this may be enough for many people, though initial pricing won't undercut other hard drive players.

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About the Author

Bill Howard is the editor of TechnoRide.com, the car site for tech fans, and writes a column on car technology for PC Magazine each issue. He is also a contributing editor of PC Magazine.
Bill's articles on PCs, notebooks, and printers have been cited five times in the annual Computer Press Association Awards. He was named as one of the industr... See Full Bio

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